Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, Vol 54, 196-200, Copyright © 1982 by Endocrine Society

ARTICLES

Evaluation of pituitary gonadotropic function in men: value of luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone response versus basal luteinizing hormone level for discrimination of diagnosis

SM Harman, PD Tsitouras, PT Costa, DL Loriaux and RJ Sherins

We examined the serum LH response to LRH in 40 normal men and 38 men with various forms of gonadal dysfunction in an attempt to determine whether the LH response to LRH was more useful than the basal LH level alone for categorizing pathophysiological subgroups of gonadal dysfunction. The subgroups studied included hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, delayed puberty, idiopathic oligospermia, and primary hypogonadism. Log transformation of all values was done in order to normalize the data. Spearman's correlation analysis showed that increased basal LH was associated with increased incremental LH responses. However, our preliminary analysis of LRH response data suggested that the changes in LH were smaller in the secondary hypogonadal and delayed puberty groups then could be accounted for by the differences in basal LH level. Accordingly, we used various statistical techniques to test whether, and under what conditions, LRH testing provides information beyond that evident from examination of basal LH values. We found that the relationship between basal LH and the LH response to LRH differs in men with and without hypothalamic- pituitary dysfunction and that this difference can be exploited to improve the discrimination of men with pituitary hypogonadism from normals.

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				M. Christ-Crain, C. Meier, P. R. Huber, L. Zimmerli, and B. Mueller Value of Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Testing in the Differential Diagnosis of Androgen Deficiency in Elderly Men J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab., March 1, 2005; 90(3): 1280 - 1286. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]